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Talk:The Journal of Gabriel Orwell/@comment-28783448-20170413165332
(I know this is long, I'm just leaving a review as a sort of helping hand for the future, as this idea has a lot of potential.) It doesn't suit my personal preferences of pacing and horror and such, but a lot of people seem to like it, so it's hard to comment on. Though I can say the ending is over the top, because if he killed himself, why would he gouge his eyes out AND stab his inner ears AND slit his wrists? Is it implying he was killed, or did he actually kill himself? The detail about the TVs being smashed is good, though, as it fits very well with the rest of the story. Now, here come the personal preferences. The main thing I enjoyed was the way each event was described. It went into very good detail on all the settings and events, and it skipped over the unimportant bits. Now, the bad stuff. The pacing is incredibly jarring and off. There are hardly any segways from part to part, making it confusing when one moment the character is in the school, and the next sentence he is at the motel. The pacing of the horror I also found very poor, as it goes from fair subtlety to obvious horror in the same paragraph (When he hears the TV static to when he sees the eyes is much too quick). Done at a much slower pace, it could actually be creepy, but here, not to be rude, it falls on its face. The character is very poorly written. The "I am writing this to stay sane" bit is incredibly cliche and feels forced, and the "I am not insane" bit is both stolen from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Telltale Heart" and is never brought up again, ever, leaving what could have been an interesting subplot worthless. Not only that, but it contradicts what the character had said where he is trying to stay sane. He is also uninteresting, being less of a character and feeling more like he's only there because the story needs a character. That would be fine if the story was less about him and more about the events around him, but instead the entire story is based off of him and his thoughts and reactions. The character is also brushed off as "Just being crazy," when that's not how this stuff works. If he was born mentally ill, he would have seen this stuff prior to the story, but there's no traumatic or brain-damaging incident that we see which incites this sort of behavior. The only thing I liked about him was that his name is a clever reference to George Orwell, since the TV is staring at him like in 1984. Overall, I'm sorry to say, the story is very poor and I can't help but feel as though the creator didn't try too hard. The character is poorly written, the horror isn't even all that scary, and the pacing is very poor. Do not take this as an insult: Rather, keep improving and getting better at writing so that this idea reaches its maximum potential.